Where My Friends Will Sing no More
by skullgirllove
Summary: After Valjean let him escape Javert heads back to the barricades, although when he gets there he is compleatly unprepared for what he sees. Inspired by a Les Mis production I just saw in Boston.


The first thing Javert noticed when he entered the fallen barricade was the silence. His entire life he had been surrounded by noise. As a child he had grown accustom to the loud and usually unintelligible screams of prisoners in their dirty cells. As a man not much had changed, only this time he was on the other side of the bars. Even at home, in his rare free time, reading a book perhaps, he could hear the faint hum of conversation and traffic from outside his window. But here, although in the center of a busy street, where schoolboys had shouted and laughed not hours earlier, there was absolute silence.

Not letting this unnerve him, after maybe a half-second hesitation he pressed forward. Cautiously he examined the area stretched before him. His dark eyes scanned the rubble for some sign of Valjean. He was fairly certain the older man was not among the dead, he was too clever for that. What he was doing in the middle of this mess in the first place was a mystery to Javert.

Javert turned at the first noise he had heard since he came here. It was the dull scrape of wood on stone, the turning of cart 's wheels. Looking behind him the inspector saw a large, wooden cart being pulled in his general direction. Picking up the bodies. Javert had wondered why he hadn't seen more lying around.

He would have gone about his business then, let the man pulling the cart carry out his gruesome task, but his eye caught something. In the cart something gold glistened. It was small but it was enough to make the Inspector look inside the wooden vehicle. The gold light was in fact emanating from the vest of one of the corpses. As Javert scanned the body he realized he knew this boy. He was the leader of this riot, the one waving the flag. The red material was clutched even now in his hand. He must have been waving it to the very end.

Javert held out his hand, signaling the man to halt the cart. The inspector moved closer, holding the torch he carried next to the dead boy, trying to illuminate his features. It was most definitely the leader; Javert recognized his fine features as well as his mane of golden hair, turned browner now with gunpowder and dirt. As he gazed at the motionless revolutionary Javert's eyes drifted to the person who lay beside him. A very small person.

Javert halted completely as the light fell across the small boy's face. His brow knit with horror at the sight. He knew this small someone as well, knew his name in fact. It was the little gamin who had nearly been the death of him earlier, the one who had revealed his identity to the rebels. The inspector, even before the barricades, had known Gavroche. He had spent many unpleasant hours dealing with his various shenanigans, the most recent of which involved trying to make a home in the hollowed out wooden elephant that stood in a nearby square. The little boy had driven Javert nearly to the breaking point by marching beside him and stiffly trying to copy the older man's every move.

He lay before Javert now, his little eyes open and glassy, at least three red stains on his shirt that signified he had been shot multiple times. He couldn't have been older than twelve. Javert stayed in that frozen position for a long time. Only when the cart puller shifted uncomfortably, making a small noise in the silence did the inspector look up. Realizing he had been standing in that position for quiet a while he distractedly gestured for the cart to move on.

The cart moved away, the slight bumping motion causing the small body inside to jerk about slightly, his head lolling to the side and his mouth open in shock.

Had he known when he had risen this morning that he would never again follow behind the inspector, shoulders drawn to his ears, legs straight as tin soldiers?

As the dead child disappeared from view Javert sank to his knees, slamming his fist into the pavement with frustration. Anger and sadness washed over him, so powerful after so long feeling nothing, it was all he could do to not collapse on the pavement. He was angry, yes, at whom? The soldier who had seen a small boy writhing in pain and had lifted his rifle to fire again? The revolutionaries, for thinking up this little battle in the first place? The young boy himself for always trying to be a man, fighting man's battles when he should have been somewhere safe and warm with some one to shelter him from the weight of the world? God?

Shaking his head Javert rose to his feet. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a sewer covering and he mechanically headed towards it. He knew, of course that that would be the route Valjean had taken. After following the man for twenty year he had a very good idea of how his mind worked. The inspector tried to think of the whole reason he was here, think of Valjean and the justice he had to face. The familiar determination filled him and it was enough to make him put one foot in front of the other. But it didn't take away the schoolboy with the red flag clutched in his grasp, or the ex convict firing into the air as he himself fled the scene, or the prostitute missing two front teeth calling for her daughter as she died. It didn't change the fact that there was a young boy with three bullets in his chest that would never laugh again. Javert would follow Valjean through the sewers; arrest him, taking to prison where he belonged. And he would return to his empty house with satisfaction and go to bed knowing one more criminal was off the streets. And it wouldn't be enough.


End file.
